It is amazing how fast ten years can go by. This time that long ago, the weather was just as gorgeous and on that day, dad broke down in the red Jetta near Breezewood and Seth drove all the way out to pick him up. I walked down Carson Street and dropped a fateful letter in the mailbox. The day before, me and dad drove back from Bloomington, Indiana after a wonderful weekend with great people. The weather that night on the drive home to Pittsburgh was incredible. I remember staring out at the setting sun over central Ohio as the sky got deeper and darker blue and as we raced past 18-wheelers. Later that week, the weather got cranky and by Thursday, it was snowing as Ben Hardt and I walked to Michael’s on Sarah to get pizza and Yuengling.

I got a cheap little nine-dollar radio at the Rite Aid down the block to listen to the Pirates games on. I took the radio with me to my little drywall jobs and listened to the Pirates mount loss after loss. One raw rainy morning I uncovered a bunch of newspapers from the 1960 World Series and took them home with me. I haven’t seen them in six years. I was trying to make haste on that job and dad came out to help me finish it up. The weather’s crankiness continued into May and after visiting friends in Iowa for a week, I came home to the greyest city turned green. It was gorgeous. Ben was playing a show at Starbucks (I think?) and I was amazed at the change in weather. Pittsburgh’s winter is awful, but its spring/summer/fall makes up for it.